A-level maths mock papers: how to sit, mark and grade your mock

What's in an A-level maths mock paper

Every board sets three papers of 2 hours and 100 marks, adding up to 300. What differs is where the statistics and mechanics go.

OCR's other specification, MEI (H640), has papers in pure and mechanics, pure and statistics, and a shorter 75 mark pure and comprehension paper. The 2027 dates come from the AQA, Edexcel and OCR timetables. Ask your teacher which papers your mock uses, because many schools set one or two rather than all three.

Where A-level maths mock papers come from

The current specifications were first examined in 2018, so real past papers run from then, plus each board's sample papers. Pearson keeps its newest papers for teachers only, so that at least one is unseen for a mock, and releases most papers once they are nine months old. Your school's mock may be a paper you can't find online.

For practice at home, download past papers and mark schemes free from AQA, Edexcel and OCR. To grade one, Ofqual advises boundaries from 2019 or earlier, or 2023 onwards, because grading from 2020 to 2022 was unusually generous.

How to sit an A-level maths mock at home

1. Pick an unseen paper and print it, with the board's formula booklet.
2. Have your calculator and nothing else. No notes, no phone.
3. Set a 2 hour timer. That is 1.2 minutes a mark, so a 10 mark question deserves about 12 minutes.
4. Mark it strictly with the mark scheme. Give method marks only where your working shows the method.
5. Add up your total and note the topic of every lost mark.

Grade your mock with the June 2026 boundaries

Boundaries are set on your total out of 300. These are the latest, from AQA, Edexcel and OCR.

For one paper, take a third and round up. An A is then about 73 out of 100 with AQA and 70 with Edexcel or OCR, and an A* about 87, 85 and 84. Use it as a rough guide: no paper gets its own boundary, and the 2027 figures will differ.

A typical mock question, worked through

Stationary points turn up in pure papers on every board. Question: find the stationary points of y = 2x³ − 9x² + 12x − 4 and decide their nature.

Set the derivative to zero: x = 1 or x = 2. Substitute back: at x = 1, y = 2 − 9 + 12 − 4 = 1, and at x = 2, y = 16 − 36 + 24 − 4 = 0. Then use the second derivative.

At x = 1 it is −6, which is negative, so (1, 1) is a maximum. At x = 2 it is 6, which is positive, so (2, 0) is a minimum. In the graph below, x runs across and y up: the curve peaks at x = 1 and dips to touch the x-axis at x = 2.

Check your own working with the Derivative Calculator. Statistics papers lean on the normal distribution, so try this question from our Probability course and press Mark.

Common mistakes in A-level maths mocks

• Answers straight off the calculator. When a question says to show your working or reasoning, a bare answer scores nothing, even if it is right.
• Decimals when the question wants exact. "Exact" means keep surds, fractions, π or ln, not a rounded decimal.
• The wrong value of g. In mechanics, use g = 9.8 m s⁻² unless the question tells you otherwise.
• A missing conclusion. Hypothesis tests and proofs need a final sentence in context. The number alone is not the answer.
• Radians and degrees mixed up. Calculus with trigonometry works in radians. Check your calculator mode.

Use a daily paper as a short timed mock

A full paper needs 2 hours. On busier days, sit one topic's daily paper: Algebra and Functions, Calculus, Statistics or Mechanics, or Further Maths. For dates and whether mocks count, see the A-level mocks guide.

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